The French press technique for brewing beverages has long been considered to be one of the best and most efficient methods for brewing coffee, and sometimes tea. The French press method allows for the optimal proportional ratio between the amount of beverage (e.g., coffee) brewed to the amount of flavor base (e.g., ground coffee) used. For coffee, the full flavored taste and efficiency is a result of the process by which the coffee grounds are thoroughly saturated by allowing the maximum surface area of the coffee grounds to make contact with the water during the brewing time. The theory being the greater the contact area and contact time, the more thorough the wetting of the coffee grounds and thus the more complete the brewing process and more of the flavor that can be extracted. Unfortunately consumers and commercial establishments tend to avoid the use of the French press because of the issues around clean-up.
Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, the French press technique is described for a particular example where coffee is being brewed.
Referring to FIG. 1, one places a flavor base (i.e. ground coffee) 10 and hot water 12 in a brewing chamber 14, and allows coffee to brew. Because the flavor base 10 often floats to the surface of the water 12, one may stir or otherwise agitate the mixture of the ground coffee and the water to more thoroughly wet the individual coffee grounds that constitute the ground coffee.
Referring to FIG. 2, after the coffee 15 has brewed, one grasps a handle 16 of a filter piston 18 (also referred to as “filtration piston”), inserts the filter piston 18 into the brewing chamber 14, and presses the filter piston 18 down toward the bottom of the pot. For the taste of the brewed beverage to be relatively uniform from container to container, one typically uses and manually monitors a timer to measure the brew time.
Because the filter piston 18 passes liquid but does not pass solid flavor base particles, as one presses the filter piston toward the bottom of the brewing chamber 14, the solid particle free brewed beverage 15 fills the portion of the container above the filter piston while the filter retains the solid waste (spent flavor base) 10 in the portion of the container below the filter. The edge 20 of the filter piston 18 and the inner side 22 of the brewing chamber 14 form a seal sufficient to prevent solid spent flavor base grounds from passing between the edge of the filter and the inner side of the chamber.
After one presses the filter 18 below a spout 24 of the brewing chamber 14, he can pour the substantially particle-free brewed beverage 15 into a cup (not shown in FIGS. 1 and 2) via the spout 24. Although one may stop pressing the filter piston 18 after the filter is below the spout 24, one typically presses the filter all the way to the bottom of the coffee container 14 to reduce the chances of undersized coffee grounds passing through the filter and into the cup.
Despite the efficiencies in the brewing process there is an inherent inefficiency in the clean-up process. These inefficiencies deter both commercial and general consumer users. Traditionally cleaning a French press requires the user to remove the spent flavor base by hand which is often a messy process.
Still referring to FIG. 2, after one pours out the remaining brewed beverage 15, he retracts the filter piston 18 from the brewing chamber 14 by pulling on the piston handle 16. The user then must reach into the chamber and remove the spent flavor base 10 by hand. Once the chamber 14 is free of the spent flavor base, the user can clean then chamber and filter piston.
Attempts to avoid contact with the wet spent flavor base often leads to more issues such as a clogged drain or broken brewing chambers. The user can not simply rinse the grounds out down the drain because often grounds will clog the drain. Attempts to simply dump the spent flavor base into the trash do not usually work because the wet flavor base just sticks to the bottom and sides of the brewing chamber. Since the most brewing chambers are made of glass, smacking or shaking the chamber to remove the sticking grounds often results in an unfavorable result.